

I thought I would share these simple steps,  I use this formula when creating in general and projects, camps, workshops, life, art, etc.

Amazingly simple step are both brilliant and effective.  They have staying power and make sense across the board. For me, simple is powerful.

I was honored to be given a similar soulful guide like this many years ago and yes,  it altered  my entire life.   There was such an awakening of what I truly wanted to accomplish in my life and a huge wave of passion and adventure began.  My sense of life direction like the tides turned, I so love the ride and am so very grateful.

So, ask yourself:  “What Will YOU Create that Will Make the World Awesome?”   Lovely steps below..

The link to the full article where these steps originated is below, mahalo Greg McKeown. Though I  brazenly did a bit of my own edits….everything brilliant is Greg’s.

Step 1: Sketch Your Career. It is so easy to get consumed by activities in our lives and careers. We get so caught up in living our lives that we don’t stop to think sufficiently about our lives. We are reacting instead of being strategic. When I find this happening, I use this simple tool to get a broader perspective. You start on the left at the beginning of your career and end on the right hand side (today). You draw a single line up if you were enjoying the experience and down if it was unfulfilling for you. Write down where you were working, what you were working on, and any other factors that shaped your experience.   It also works if you paint, or make a collage, or write a song, or a poem!!!

Now Breathe, no, c’mon really slooow breathe!

(See the original Harvard Business Review piece What Will You Create to Make the World Awesome? to see/use the sketch template for Step 1 and 2).

Step 2: Connect the Dots. Use the sketch from Step 1 as a launch pad into being an anthropologist of your own life. Go somewhere quiet. You might think of it like a strategic offsite for your own life and career.

Ask: When was I truly happy and why? What activity or theme do I keep coming back to? What is my gravitational pull? When was life and work effortless for me? What isn’t working for me? When do I seem most like myself? When was it meaningless and why? When was work meaningful and why? Don’t rush the process. Pause long enough to really listen. Write the answers down as they come so you can reflect on them later. I am visual so I started a simple collage to represent these happy things and ended up doing THREE monstrous collages that blew my mind. It not needed it!!!!

Step 3: Ask, “What Will I Create that Will Make the World Awesome?” This is WONDERFULLY wild question ( I LOVE IT!) but an essential element of strategy is, to state the obvious, thinking about what we want to create in the future.

Ask: What would I do if I could do anything? What would I do if all jobs paid the same? If I could only achieve one thing in my career, what would it be? What do I really want? Again, these are big questions. But my experience is that people spend far more time worried about their job than in creating a vision for their career and how they can uniquely contribute to the world.

(If you are looking for a pep talk, this three minute video from “Kid President” does a brilliant job challenging us to figure out what we can do to make the world awesome). Brilliant!!!!

From Greg: Many years ago I followed a process not at all unlike this one and, without exaggeration, it changed the course of my life. The insight I gained led me to quit law school, leave England and move to America to start down the path as a teacher and author. You’re reading this because of that choice. It remains the single most important — and strategic — career decision of my life.

It’s a simple process. But it can help us to break down some complex questions. Like the poet Mary Oliver’s beautifully haunting question: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Link to Greg’s story: What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? | LinkedIn.

Someone brilliant who is changing the world..

Greg McKeown Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum